Investment worth $25 bn soon in oil and gas sector: Pradhan

The Dollar Business Bureau 

The Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Friday that there will a huge investment in the oil and gas sector worth $25 billion is on the anvil. 

Pradhan expressed great optimism about the opportunities for investment in the sector. There will soon be “investment worth $25 billion in the petroleum sector in which oil and gas exploration companies like Cairn India will play a big role,” he told reporters in Dehradun. 

In a reply to the question on volatile global oil prices, he said that the firms reposition themselves in line with the fluctuating prices of crude oil in the global market. 

Pradhan further said he doesn’t think that fluctuating prices of crude oil should be of concern for the oil companies as they know how to re-adjust and reposition themselves to the variations in the international market. 

He claimed that the oil policy of the Central Government has strengthened the country’s economy, adding that the oil prices in recent past may have been increased more often but at the same time the Centre has also invested 50% of the profits made by the sector into schemes such as the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana for the empowerment and welfare of women. 

Since the scheme has been launched in May 2016, more than 90 lakh connections of LPG have been distributed among beneficiaries all over India and to more than 50,000 women in the state of Uttarakhand alone and that is quite an achievement, the minister said. 

“Our target is to ensure that in the coming two years not a single family remains without an LPG connection,” he added.